Is
it me or are there fewer zombie novels being published at the moment? It’s probably
just me but even so, it feels like a welcome moment of respite in a publishing
landscape where the number of zombie books was reaching saturation level (and
from me, that’s saying something!) You really can have too much of a good thing
you know.
The
good thing for me is that this means I’m getting interested in zombie books
again. Not that I ever lost that interest, not really, but it was a close thing
at times. D.J Molles’ ‘The Remaining’ series has had good things said about it,
just recently, and the arrival of a review copy gave me the chance to find out
for myself if all these good words had any substance to them. The good news is
that they do but I still can’t help but hope for better things in the books to
come. Go on, have some blurb…
In a steel-and-lead encased bunker a
Special Forces soldier waits on his final orders.
On the surface a bacterium has turned 90% of the population into hyper-aggressive predators.
Now Captain Lee Harden must leave the bunker and venture into the wasteland to rekindle a shattered America.
On the surface a bacterium has turned 90% of the population into hyper-aggressive predators.
Now Captain Lee Harden must leave the bunker and venture into the wasteland to rekindle a shattered America.
Isn’t
that the most succinct blurb you have ever read? No messing about, just three
rather curt lines that tell you what to expect from ‘The Remaining’. The problem
is that the book itself, doesn’t really elaborate on this too much. Sure, there
are hints that the ‘zombies’ (if you could call them that) may be a little more
than the regular shambling undead but the book can swiftly be summed up as ‘Harden
fights the infected, rescues civilians, fights renegades… and repeat’. Harden
carries the plot well but is a little too good to be true. I liked the way that
Molles has Harden waiting on tenterhooks for his mission and then throws him
totally into the unknown but there’s never any doubt that he will overcome
obstacles, even when he is trying to protect civilians at the same time. The
guy is just too much of a hard-core military dude for that. It’s early days
though (very early judging by the number of books in the series) so it’s fair
to say that ‘The Remaining’ is more about introducing Harden rather than doing
anything interesting with the character. If you’re after seeing what Molles can
do with a character who clearly isn’t geared up to coping with this new world,
read ‘An Empty Soul’ at the back of the book. Molles displays a feel for the
demands of post-apocalyptic life that isn’t in ‘The Remaining’ (yet) but gives
me real hope for the future of this series. Hard choices are always the order
of the day and Molles gives his main character one of the hardest of all (doesn’t
shy away from the gory details of it either…)
As
an introductory piece then, ‘The Remaining’ does its job very well despite its
shortcomings; certainly well enough to make the sequel a ‘definite read’. There
is an energy and urgency to the plot (a little bit for Harden but mostly for
the people following him) that kicks in at just the right time and swept me
along to the conclusion. I polished ‘The Remaining’ off in a couple of sittings
and that’s a pretty big deal these days! While I was never that worried for Harden’s
safety, Molles does paint a very bleak backdrop full of ruin and abandonment;
that sense of emptiness really captures the feel of a world suddenly gone to
hell and I’ve got to admit to jumping a couple of times when the infected
suddenly appeared (just because it was so quiet). I got to the end of ‘The
Remaining’ and immediately read the excerpt from the sequel, ‘Aftermath’, to
find out what happened next. That’s not something I’d normally do so that tells
you something pretty positive about the experience overall.
Room
for improvement then but ‘The Remaining’ is a thoroughly entertaining read
(think Matthew Reilly meets ’28 Days Later’ and you won’t go too far wrong)
that has me eagerly awaiting the sequel. You can’t ask for a lot more than that
from a book.
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